Luke Ford | No sacred cows.

Ben Carson’s Church Believes the U.S. Government Will Team Up With the Antichrist

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Luke Ford

Jay Michaelson writes: Ben Carson’s church believes the United States government will bring about the End Times.

According to mainstream Seventh-day Adventist doctrine, the Second Coming of Christ will occur after the U.S. government teams up with the Catholic Church—which Adventists believe is the “Babylon” of the Book of Revelation, with the pope being the Antichrist—to compel Adventists and others to worship on Sunday, rather than Saturday.

That may seem like a small hook on which to hang the fate of the world, but for Adventists, it is a core belief, taught at “prophecy seminars” and elaborated in excruciating geopolitical detail by key Adventist leaders.

Is it awkward for Ben Carson to run for president, if his faith believes the U.S. government will team up with the Antichrist? Will it matter to his evangelical base if he, like his denomination, believes that the government will join forces with the Whore of Babylon, to persecute religious minorities and compel Sunday worship?

So far, no.

We don’t know, though, what Carson personally believes—only what his denomination teaches.

In fact, the one time Carson was asked about the End Times, the media blew it. In an interview with conservative journalist Sharyl Atkisson, Carson first focused on the universal aspects of Adventist theology.

“I’m a Christian,” he said. “I belong to the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. I believe in godly principles, of loving your fellow man, caring about your neighbor, developing your God-give talents to the utmost so you become valuable to the people around you.”

Pressed on his view about the End Times, Carson said, “You could guess that we are getting closer to that. You do have people who have a belief system that sees this apocalyptic phenomenon occurring, and that they’re a part of it, and who would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if they gain them.”

But, he reassured the public, “I think we have a chance to certainly do everything that we can to ameliorate the situation, to prevent—I would always be shooting for peace. You know, I wouldn’t just take a fatalistic view of things.”

The mainstream media howled—Ben Carson believes the End is Nigh!—but missed the real story, as Sarah Posner, a columnist at the online journal Religion Dispatches, noted. Neither Atkisson nor anyone else pressed Carson on the Adventist-specific aspects (if any) of his worldview.

The Seventh-day Adventist sect (and, later, the Jehovah’s Witnesses) emerged out of messianic fervor in the mid-19th century, when the date of the Second Coming was established as October 22, 1844. Unlike the more recent predictions from the likes of Harold Camping, this one, by Baptist preacher William Miller, was not a fringe phenomenon. Tens of thousands of Americans believed the Second Coming was about to happen, and they acted on those beliefs, selling belongings and gathering on hilltops awaiting Christ’s return.

When it didn’t happen, in the words of one believer, “Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before.”

Quickly, though—precisely as described in Leon Festinger’s classic When Prophecy Fails—many of the faithful regrouped. One of Miller’s followers said that Christ had returned, in a way; He was now in Heaven, commencing the judgment of the world. Judgment Day is more like Judgment Period, and October 22, 1844, is when it began.

To most Christians, all this is heresy, and Adventists have been persecuted for a century and a half. Their peculiar ways—vegetarianism, church on Saturday—mark them as different, which is obviously part of the reason they exist in the first place. And other distinctive beliefs—for example, since death is simply a kind of sleep, there is no such thing as hell—have caused many fundamentalists to reject them. While Seventh-day Adventists may, today, seem like just another Christian denomination, in fact they have long seen themselves as a group apart from the rest of the world.

Posted in Adventist, Ben Carson, Christianity | Comments Off

Steve Sailer: Hungarian PM Viktor Orban Accuses George Soros of Stoking Camp of the Saints; Soros Confirms Orban

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

It’s nice to see Hungary standing up for itself against this horde of Muslim refugees. It seems like Eastern Europeans have a clearer sense of their national interests than does Germany.

Steve Sailer writes:

From Bloomberg Business:

Orban Accuses Soros of Stoking Refugee Wave to Weaken Europe
Andras Gergely
October 30, 2015 — 12:59 AM PDT
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused billionaire investor George Soros of being a prominent member of a circle of “activists” trying to undermine European nations by supporting refugees heading to the continent from the Middle East and beyond.
“His name is perhaps the strongest example of those who support anything that weakens nation states, they support everything that changes the traditional European lifestyle,” Orban said in an interview on public radio Kossuth. “These activists who support immigrants inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling network.” …
Soros said in an e-mailed statement that a six-point plan published by his foundation helps “uphold European values” while Orban’s actions “undermine those values.”
“His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle,” he said in the statement. “Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national border as the obstacle.”

In other words, Soros is agreeing with Orban.

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* I don’t believe there is a conspiracy in the usual sense of the word, but Soros and many of his ilk hold views that are hostile to the idea of a blood-and-soil nation state. Offhand, I would guess that the cabal includes Gates, Buffett, Slim, Obama, Hillary Clinton, the Bush family, et al.

They don’t have to conspire in the usual sense, i.e. holding discussions in secret, plotting, planning, etc. etc. They all hold the same beliefs, and they are doing nothing to hide their intentions.

* If that were true, you’d think all their work would go into breaking Japan and Israel. If they’re going by power of the practicioners of blood and soil nationalism, and their degree of blood and soilyness, I mean. If they just want to rack up wins they should start with Liberia, maybe swing by Rwanda.

But, oddly enough, they seem really interested in Europe instead.

* The people-smuggling gangsters are only bit players in the plan drawn up and orchestrated by the likes of Soros and Merkel.

* George Soros is a devotee of Karl Popper, the theorist of the Open Society. TS Eliot criticized Popper for divorcing philosophy from moral imagination and thus severing culture from its religious roots. TS Eliot advocated the recovery of Christian community. There are no Christian thinkers in the West today who criticize the dangers of a liberal democracy and the open society.

* Then there’s the juggernauts of China and India, with their lack of diversity, obviously racist regimes, entrenched cultures of xenophobia, walls against brown people, etc.

* Does Soros ever say anything anywhere about what’s best for European people? Or does he just talk about obstacles and objectives?

* I remember writing to David Limbaugh, in response to a column of his 15 years ago, asking what was wrong with his brother that he did not talk more about immigration. Back then, Rush was still interested, at least somewhat in mainstream respectability.

Then three things happened:

– He got fired from ESPN in 2003 for making the entirely unremarkable comment that the mainstream media was desirous of seeing black NFL quarterbacks do well,

– His subsequent detainment at a general aviation airport upon his return from the Dominican Republic on trumped up drug charges (i.e. prescription ED meds)

– And finally the NFL owners denying his application to be a minority (5-10%) owner of the St. Louis Rams.

I am sure those 3 events caused him to realize that he was never going to be admitted to “the club,” despite his $500M net worth. If that’s what pushed him our direction, all I can say is “welcome Rush.”

* Rush has had ample time to publicly raise many of the issues that other lesser known conservatives who work mainly in print (e.g. Brimelow on immigration or the late Sam Francis on traditional conservatism) have consistently been making. There’s even a strong chance that he’s not entirely familiar with John Derbyshire, this blog, and others. If Pat Buchanan’s name comes up, its more of a disdain along lines of “Oh, yes, Pat. Didn’t he run for something about 20yrs ago….and lose?” In other words, Rush measures success by one thing, and that’s the bottom line.

Forget even thinking he’ll admit that he’s familiar with Jared Taylor’s writings. That last name would definitely take a courageous stance in this day and age to cop to and this man isn’t about to put himself out there for anything that might make him lose any more sponsors.

Rush’s original two conservative heroes by his own admission: Bill Buckley and George Will and both men to a certain extent supported open borders. Not exactly principled paragons of conservatism whether at the time or now.

And that’s the thing. Over the last few decades, the words “patriotic immigration” just don’t come up when you say the name Limbaugh, whereas mistakes in personal life and wanting to become an NFL owner/ESPN co-host do. Pretty much tells you all about him. He sold out years ago.

* Soros, like many old Jews of his generation, is obsessed with saving “retroactively” East European Jewry. National borders were one of the main causes of millions being trapped under genocidal regimes. Of course he wants to soften and open up nationalist, fascist regimes like Mr Orban’s. It is being done on the open, and Orban and Soros acknowledge it. No conspiracy. The use of “inadvertently” by Orban reveals that he is not a conspiracy idiot, but a honest leader doing what he thinks is the best for his people. We should respect Orban and Soros.

* I wonder which “European values” Orban is undermining? Orban’s popularity ratings are skyrocketing, while Merkel’s are tanking. Austria and Poland just moved emphatically to the right, while the nationalist party in Sweden, which has seen its support double in elections every four years for the last two decades, has already seen its support double in the one year since the 2014 elections. I guess “European values” don’t include ideas like, oh, doing what your citizens want you to do.

That, to me, has been one of the more remarkable facts of the migrant crisis. Because it’s affecting numerous countries rather than just one, we get to see how both citizens and the international press treat the way different politicians are reacting. The press and various NGOs continually talk about the obligation of democratically-elected leaders to ignore both the rule of law and the will of their voters. Democracy and rule of law no exist when either manages to serve conservative, national interests.

* We should most definitely not respect Soros or his position. He needs to be thought of as what he is, someone who has self-selected himself to be an enemy of the traditional West and traditional Western nation states.

He may be smart, but he’s not smart enough to have any idea of what a mess he’s unleashing. He’s like someone who spits in the salad and then loudly tells everyone about it. If he thinks this is smart, he might be one of those people as clueless as Merkle about estimating human behaviour.

* Whether or not you think Soros’ plans are part of some Jewish plot against white policies. His policies are objectively bad for real Jews. He covertly supported the anti Israeli Jewish group J Street. Supporting open borders in Europe with the onslaught of young Muslim men will cause Hitler’s dream to come true. Europe will be judenrein in less than 2 generations.

* Soros cleverly claims to be taking the side of people (refugees) vs. abstraction (nation-states).

The answer is that

1) Protection of ‘the refugee’ does not necessitate their mass migration to countries thousands of kilometers away from their homelands (via safe polities).

2) That far from protecting refugees, encourage exoduses inevitably leads to more deaths and more exploitation and

3) That people (citizens of nation-states) want to be protected themselves. That is, the nation-state provides protection, the ‘Open Society Foundation’ not so much.

Posted in Christianity, Europe, George Soros, Hungary | Comments Off

Hispanic-White Test Score Gap on 2015 NAEP

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Average Hispanic performance is just mediocre. Not terrible … just *consistently* mediocre.

There are only a few things of note:
– Florida Hispanics–as expected–are of a slightly different cut and do a bit better.
– New York, despite having more black Hispanics gets bog standard performance.
– The generally high-performing (white) states really do *not* have any capability to move Hispanic scores up. Even Massachusetts Hispanics are just average. The average across a bunch of states with decent white scores–Connecticut, Washington, Colorado, Minnesota–pretty much the Hispanic average.

To me, the lone data point with a real “message” is California–it has the worst Hispanic scores, tied only by Alabama. Enough below the average i’d guess there’s statistical significance.

My take home from that is the more Hispanics you take in, the more they live in a Hispanicized world, in Hispanic cities, with Hispanic norms, Hispanic teachers, administrators, public officials … the more mediocre the Hispanic performance. Essentially it degrades toward their performance in Latin America … because they are now living in a Latin America.

It’s essentially the problem with the Raj Chetty’s bogus “solution” (integration with whites). With fewer and fewer whites around, you simple don’t have enough whites to provide minority “uplift”.

If you want the quality and amenities of a white country … you sorta need white people around to deliver them!

* Despite the billions of tax dollars thrown at this intractable problem, the stats reveal that you cannot educate those who cannot be educated. Now the region formerly known as southern California has been transformed into Mexifornia. In fifty more years no one will believe that this was once the driver of the aerospace and defense industries. But you’ll be able to get a killer taco de lengue on every rincon del calle.

Posted in America, Latino | Comments Off

Bridge Of Spies

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

Armond Whites writes: The dark, creepy murk of Steven Spielberg’s 2011 Lincoln also seeps into his new film, Bridge of Spies, an account of the 1957 exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union of captured espionage agents, the Russian Colonel Rudolph Abel and the American pilot Gary Francis Powers. This gloom can be attributed to Spielberg’s suggestion, in both films, of American political anxiety. After the ebullient history of Amistad, he has gone to the shadowy partisan chicanery behind Lincoln’s 14th Amendment to the Constitution and now to this consideration of the United States’ lack of innocence in global matters. Scenes of Abel’s and Powers’s secretive missions, and eventual imprisonment, juxtapose how our government and military matched Russia’s unprincipled subterfuge.

In Lincoln the weird darkness passed for cynical realism, but in Bridge of Spies it conveys disillusionment. When attorney James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) defends Abel before the Supreme Court, the imagery is overcast, somber; when Powers is detained by a Russian court, sunlight shines through the casements. Seem anti-American? In visual terms, Bridge of Spies is an ACLU movie. Through Donovan’s difficult maneuvers (against public disapproval and family discouragement), Spielberg pursues the sanctity of civil-liberties issues. Donovan, an insurance lawyer who served at the Nuremberg trials, must fight Cold War paranoia — presented as an eternal threat to America democracy.

Good guy Donovan (his stern face features Hanks’s twinkling eyes) represents a common man nobly acting against judicial and CIA expediencies; he defends the principles within the Constitution, referred to as “the Rule Book.” Robert De Niro’s overlooked The Good Shepherd (2007) was a more complex history of the social ideas at stake in CIA operations, but Bridge of Spies shows simplistic sentimentality when Donovan exclaims, “American justice is on trial! We’re in a battle for civilization!” Those are Tony Kushnerisms, hangovers from his over-rhetorical Lincoln script, which encouraged an unfortunate sanctimony in Spielberg’s newly politicized vision. After Kushner, the lights have dimmed in Spielberg’s worldview, making Bridge of Spies a glum experience.

Posted in Hollywood | Comments Off

20 signs of a broken film culture

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

Armand White writes:

Since 2004, the year that film culture split along moral and artistic lines, political and class biases have been exhibited in films that became more and more partisan. This rift was furthered by a compromised media, where critics praised movies that exhibited cynicism along with political bias.

Not just entertainment, the 20 films listed here effectively destroyed art, social unity, and spiritual confidence. They constitute a corrupt, carelessly politicized canon.

1) Good Night and Good Luck (2005) — George Clooney, president of the corrupt canon, directed and acted in a dishonest fantasy biopic of TV-news icon Edward R. Murrow to revive blacklist lore as part of a liberal agenda.

2) The Dark Knight (2008) used the Batman myth to undermine heroism, overturn social mores, and embrace anarchy.

3) Ocean’s Twelve (2004) — Steven Soderbergh salutes land of the greedy and home of the depraved in a reboot franchise sequel, scoffing at the post-War conviction of Sinatra’s Rat Pack original.

4) 12 Years a Slave (2013) distorted the history of slavery while encouraging and continuing Hollywood’s malign neglect of slavery’s contemporary impact.

5) Wall-E (2008) — Nihilism made cute for children of all ages who know nothing about cultural history or how to sustain it.

6) Manderlay (2005) — Lars Von Trier’s Dogville sequel sold American self-hatred back to us, and critics fawned.

7) United 93 (2006) reduced the pain and tragedy of 9/11 to the inanity of a disaster movie.

8) Frost/Nixon (2008) — Political vengeance disguised as a dual biopic that prized showbiz egotism over conflicted public service.

9) Knocked Up (2007) — Judd Apatow’s comedy of bad manners attacked maturity and propriety.

10) The Social Network (2010) — David Fincher’s new Horatio Alger tale glorified technocrat Mark Zuckerberg with chic, digital-era arrogance.

11) Precious (2009) coincided with Obama’s first year in office to revive racial condescension with the audacity of nope.

Posted in Hollywood | Comments Off

The Master Race

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

* It seems like most Australians take Melbourne Cup day off, slackers! East Asians are only 10% of Australia’s population but it seems like they do 50% of the work. My mate down under says bring in another 10% and they can do 100% of the work and keep the whites around for comfort.

* Virtually every important American realist opposed the Vietnam and Iraq 2003 war while almost all important liberal thinkers supported the 2003 Iraq invasion. The Democrats often opposed the 1990 Gulf War, and afterward they feared the political repercussions, so they supported the 2003 Iraq War (out of fear of political repercussions).

* A pathetic girlfriend of a few years back said to me, “You love me because I’m pathetic.” Ouch. She was right. I have this urge to rescue or to be rescued, symptoms of the same emptiness.

* The Jewish way to get wasted is to do mitzvos (transcend the self).

* Uncover to discover to recover.

* Compared to American girls, Israeli girls seem much more fit and better with guns.

Posted in Australia, Personal | Comments Off

Christopher Noxon: A Hollywood husband converts

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

Danielle Berrin writes about Jenji Kohan’s husband:

Noxon’s childhood was mostly devoid of religion. He described his father as having some Quaker stock, though he identifies as Canadian and atheist. His mother, on the other hand, he described as “Buddhist and a lesbian and a feminist.” She came out when he was 10, and Noxon said the experience of growing up in an estrogen-fueled environment softened him. “I’m a huge girly man,” he said. “I wish I had more of that agro-male testosterone that needs to be curbed.”

Posted in Conversion, Hollywood | Comments Off

America & Europe Should Learn From Israel On How To Handle Infiltrators

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

From the New York Times:

Israel’s policy toward African asylum seekers is to pressure them to self-deport or, as the former interior minister Eli Yishai put it, to “make their lives miserable” until they give up and let the government deport them. About 60,000 African asylum seekers have entered Israel since 2005, most of them Muslims from the Darfur region of Sudan, and Orthodox Christians from Eritrea; today that number is closer to 45,000.
The government and some media call them “infiltrators,” a word that for most Israelis evokes Palestinians illegally crossing into Israel to launch attacks, painting them as a threat. A law passed in 2013 requires male African asylum seekers already in Israel to be detained automatically and indefinitely in the open detention center, Holot, in the Negev desert. Detainees are allowed to wander the desert between three obligatory check-ins every day, and they must also remain in Holot overnight. If they miss a check-in, they can be transferred to the nearby prison. Their only alternative is to accept a sum of $3,500 to return to their country of origin, or a third country, usually Uganda or Rwanda, often without proper documentation to stay…
As the continuing refugee crisis in Europe demonstrates, Israel is not alone in trying to deter refugees. But according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, it has the distinction of having one of the lowest asylum acceptance rates in the Western world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once warned that the arrival of African people poses a demographic risk to Israel: “If we don’t stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”

Posted in Immigration, Israel | Comments Off

Are China And The U.S.A. Long-Term Enemies?

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

I think John J. Mearsheimer is the most important political scientist of the past forty years.

John Derbyshire writes: After taping this weekend’s Radio Derb, with its segments about U.S.-China tensions and geostrategy, I was browsing through my blog roll when I came across this at Steve Hsu’s site.

The whole thing is over an hour and a half long, but well worth the time if you’re interested in the topic.

On the realist side, arguing that big nations will always seek supremacy and the U.S.A. will (and should) always act to prevent the rise of peer competitors, are Peter Brookes and John Mearsheimer. For the other side, arguing that a Metternichian (and Derbyshirean) balance of power is possible and should be sought, are Robert Daly and Kevin Rudd.

The Metternichians won on a TKO by the usual method of debate scoring, but Brookes and Mearsheimer made some powerful arguments that, I must admit, gave me pause.

Mearsheimer was particularly effective with both sabre and foil. This, for example, at 1h30m34s into the show.

They [i.e. Daly and Rudd] have a theory, and it revolves around agency, or diplomacy. They believe that the competition can be managed; and that’s very different from the way I think about the issue.
But I want to ask you this: When you look at American diplomacy over the past twenty years, does that give you confidence… [laughter]… seriously, does that give you confidence that American leaders can manage this relationship over the next thirty or forty years? [more laughter]
You know about Afghanistan; you know about Iraq; you know about Libya; you know about Ukraine; seems to me the United States has the Midas Touch in reverse.

I still prefer the Metternichian solution, but are our politicians smart enough to get us to it? Hmmm.

Posted in America, China | Comments Off

Take This Racists!

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Luke Ford

Hah! Take this, racists: the top three runners among the men in today’s NY City Marathon were a Mexican, a Chinese person, and an Italian. Among the women, the top three were an Arab, a Jew, and a Samoan.

Just kidding! East Africans took all three top spots in both categories.

Chaim Amalek: “The race ends right in my amazingly white neighborhood, the Upper West Side, where I get a close look at who the non-elite runners are. Almost entirely white. When will the NY Times report on the racist policies and customs that are keeping African Americans away from such events? The race ends right in my amazingly white neighborhood, the Upper West Side, where I get a close look at who the non-elite runners are. Almost entirely white. When will the NY Times report on the racist policies and customs that are keeping African Americans away from such events? Lamarck and Lysenko taught us all the genetics any right-thinking person needs to know.”

Miriam: “Wasn’t it an Israeli official who commented on all the Ethiopians that were brought into Israel ‘now we can win some medals in running.'”

By contrast, all of the finalists since 1984 in the Olympic men’s 100 meter dash have been of West African descent.

Posted in Race | Comments Off